With the Calgary Stampede right around the corner, there is a rising trend for homeowners wanting a rustic feel in their home. Since it’s one of our favourite styles, we are happy to share ways that you can create that “county” vibe in your home. Some are bigger changes than others and therefore more costly, but all achieve the same goal.

Before you continue!

Make sure this rustic style speaks to who you are. A home is a representation of those who live within its walls, therefore you need to make sure it suits you. Plus, if you don’t like it, changing the style of your home twice can get expensive.

Is it for you?

If you prefer warm colours that come from embracing the natural features of nature, then rustic is likely a style for you. The benefit of rustic styles is that you can mix it with a secondary style and, if done correctly, can create a beautiful and balanced atmosphere.

How to get the look?

White walls

Having a white accent wall is one of the easiest ways to create a rustic style in you’re home. White is a color that exudes cheerfulness and new beginnings. You can do anything with it, and if there are some rustic styling tips that you can’t do with your home, a white wall will help. Now, you can’t just have a white wall. Decorate it with rustic accessories or include the other tips from this blog.

Wood everywhere and anywhere

Some might say otherwise, but there is actually no limit to the amount of wood you use in a rustic home. If you have a massive appreciation for the beauty of this material, then go wild and pannel the walls with wood, lay it out on the floor, put beams in the roof and accent it with wood accessories. You can either go crazy or use it cautiously. Key is to let the wood be what it is. Appreciate the weathered and imperfect.

Faux animal skins

Nothing makes a room scream rustic like a faux animal rug does. It immediately creates warmth in and brings a little wild from the outside into your home.

Natural colors

Your colour palette should be inspired from the nature around you. Go out and look how the Earth works all those beautiful colours together. Take that visionary example and apply it to your home. It’s easy to create a rustic feel when you let the outdoors influence your design.

Use the Earth’s objects

If you are incorporating something you discovered in nature, try not to force it into becoming what you want it to be. Let it be imperfectly imperfect. Instead, work around the imperfections and you will create that rustic feel flawlessly.

Sturdy fabric

The fabric that should be found in a rustic-style home should only be that which can withstand hard times. If you’re going to have a throw blanket on the couch, make sure its made of thick cotton with simple patterns that remain classic.

You may be lucky and have space between you and your neighbour’s house, but never forget that sound travels. It doesn’t matter whether you are renovating your small apartment or your mansion, whether it’s the whole house or just the guest bathroom, you want to ensure you’re respecting your neighbours. There are certain unspoken rules to being neighbourly during renovations. Too often do people forget about those around them, and neighbours can be too kind to say something.

Courtesy notes

Before you even begin to renovate, it’s a good idea to write a letter that lets your neighbours know about your upcoming renovation. This can prevent any noise complaints from your neighbors and avoid conflicts with them. How you address them in your letter depends on your relationship with them, whether it’s friendly or professional. Let them know how long you expect the project to take, your efforts to minimize disruption, garbage waste, etc. Include a note at the end indicating that you are open to speaking with them if they have any concerns and apologize for any inconvenience that may occur.

Curfew

There are different considerations to make regarding timing and renovating throughout the day. If you want to begin on your project early in the morning, make sure you keep the loud jobs for later. You don’t want to be that neighbour hammering away at seven in the morning. Generally, renovations make a lot of noise. Be considerate about starting too early or working too late as it may cause frustration from neighbours.

Clean-up

If you’re naturally inclined to be clean, this will not be a problem for you. Make sure the garbage you’re removing from your house is properly stored and taken away when needed. Everyone likes a tidy neighbourhood. In addition, if there are little kids running around and playing, as a parent you wouldn’t want rubbish and construction materials left out for them to get a hold of.

Parking

Sometimes parking can become an issue, particularly when you have a lot of workers coming to your house. Making it impossible for your neighbours to park near their house is a situation that you’re better off avoiding. This can be avoided by setting up a decent curfew. Even telling them to leave their number on their windshield allows neighbors to call them if they are blocked in.

Watch the language

It’s not uncommon for men to joke around and use language that can be offensive to others and not something children should hear. Before it becomes a problem, let your workers know that children are around and it’s important that they are mindful of their language.

Since we were able to demo our McKenzie Lake project ourselves, we gathered some tips and tricks for our followers. With trial and error, we learned how to save money and time throughout the whole demo process. Before you take on your own project, read through this blog to save yourself some headaches.

Rent a dumpster

This will save you money in the long run, especially for those larger projects. Not only will renting a dumpster ensure your disposing of materials safely, but it will save you from making a number of trips to the dump.

Be careful removing baseboards

Ripping out baseboards and window casings may be a lot of fun, but be careful not to create more damage than necessary. The more you damage the dry wall, the more time and money it will take to patch those holes up.

Use the right gear!

The proper tools when demoing will make tasks so much easier and reduce the likelihood of causing damage to your home. Another important reminder is making sure everyone on your crew has eye protection! Ripping materials out of walls will means nails and wood dust will be everywhere.

Plan for a couple hours

Depending on how big your job is, the demo could take more than one day. To provide context, consider our McKenzie Lake project. Demoing this house took about 25 hours with a three-person crew. In our case, there was a lot to be taken out; flooring, baseboards, doors, switch/plug covers, casings around windows/doors, appliances, tiles in all rooms, cabinets, cupboards and countertops. Hopefully this gives you an idea of timing needed for your own project.

Things to keep

If your renovation involves taking out countertops in the kitchen, keep the sink. You will need it for water! If you’re one of the lucky ones who gets a new fridge, don’t throw the old one out! You can put it up for resale on Kijiji or your website of choice. Whatever you think will sell, post it. However, don’t get too hung up about getting the best deal for each item. There is a lot on the go with renovating as is, so don’t add more stress by trying to make money off items you were going to throw out.

Clean up behind you

This may come as a no brainer to some, but others have tendencies to finish a task in one room and go on to the next without taking out the garbage left behind. In the long run, this creates more work for you and others. Our advice is to take out all the garbage to your dumpster before you move on to the next task.

When you get your hands on a new project, it can be hard to hold yourself back from knocking cupboards down and ripping out baseboards. That’s how we felt with the McKenzie Lake home. It’s our first project of the year and we wanted to get started! Instead, we had to make sure we went through the 10 stages of pre-renovation. To show the importance of going through these steps, we will show you what we did with the McKenzie Lake home.

Get to know the house

For those who followed us through our blogs about pre-renovation, we stressed the point of getting to know your home and what needed to be done. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that we did the same. To know how much it would cost and how long it would take, we walked through the house to determine what needed to be done. Through this process, we created a budget for ourselves. We saw jobs which we knew how to do ourselves, and we saw where we needed to bring professionals in. In addition, we determined what areas we would be willing to give up working on if things got too expensive.

Take pictures!

This is not necessarily a step that is a must, but it’s one that will be satisfying in the long run. Take pictures of the before, the during and the after. You could even do a panorama of the room. Being able to see the change all your hard work accomplished will be incredibly satisfying. A tip to keep in mind though: make sure you remember the position and angle you took the original photo. By doing this, you’ll truly see the difference your efforts made.

Get estimates

At this stage, we needed to get contractors in. We knew what needed to be done and it was time to find out how much it cost. It’s very important to stay within our financial plan. To do so, we told the contractors what our rough budget was before they walked through the house. As our Transformation Director, Karen Ingram-Johnson, said, “You get a different result if you say, ‘how much will it cost’ vs. ‘this is what we have to spend’”. After receiving various quotes from contractors, we picked the one the fit best with our plans and budget.

Adjustments to plans

For the McKenzie Lake project, there was not a lot of structural change that needed to be done. Instead, we wanted to focus on redoing the kitchen and the bathrooms. We also hope to remove the arched doorways as they are an outdated style. Basically, we want to clean up the home and give it a fresh look. During our first walkthrough, we wanted to knock down a wall between the kitchen and the dining room, but after the contractors came in we discovered the wall had water pipes and air ducts inside. The cost to make that change was higher than our budget, so we needed to adjust our plan for the kitchen.

Create a demo list

To help save costs, it’s useful to start demoing before the contractors come in. It will do two things; save them work and save your money. We suggest making a list of what you can take down and get rid of yourself.

Now we are off to demoing! Follow our renovation process on our Instagram where you’ll get more pictures and videos to follow along with.